


Practicality, Revisited

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9581933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: In the fifteen years since their travels together, the distance between Kima and Allura has widened. Somehow, the Underdark helps to close the gap.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Critical Role Relationship Week. The random generator was very kind to me for the first day. :) My interpretation of the re-kindling of Kima and Allura’s relationship, taking place around episode 14.

Kima hangs back, behind her—ugh—rescuers. This is certainly not the way she imagined her next visit to Allura. Well, it never is. She always imagines that she'll stroll in, armor gleaming—at least she got that much right—nonchalant, the trouble vanquished, nothing can keep _Kima_ down, certainly not. It falls short every damn time.

More fool her, that she could think to match Allura's grace, her poise. As the years have worn on, she's only gotten further from it.

"We've brought you a present," Vax says, and Kima grits her teeth at the humiliation of it.

These feelings of resentment, though, they don't last long when the people in front of her move aside and the sun shines—as it always has—on Allura: lingering golden in her half-braided hair, picking out the clear seawater blue of her eyes. It is always this moment when Kima feels, like a sword to the belly, the pain of missing her. Always pushed down, muffled, while they're apart, it rises to the forefront when they're thrust together again. Even here, with barely an arm's reach between them, they still might as well be an ocean apart.

"Kima," she says. There's something off in her voice, a little wobble that doesn't belong there. "Welcome back."

Kima's legs are already moving of their own accord, just as _soon_ as she hears that wavering, moving across the distance between them in her clanking armor. Forget grace, poise, propriety; she sees in Allura's sunlit face the fear and worry that have hooked claws into her and goes to comfort her without thinking. Allura bends just enough and picks her up, armor and all, staggering back a little bit with the force of the collision.

She had not planned to apologize. She had not planned to make any excuses. She had planned to say _thank you_ , of course, because she's plenty civilized and she might've died down there in the dark if it weren't for her— _ugh_ —rescuers, but Allura sets her down and, with a tear spilling down her cheek, says, "I was so _worried_ about you."

Kima folds. "Sorry for all the trouble."

If only Vox Machina would do the proper thing, and scatter when Allura offers them tea; no, instead Kima gets dragged into plotting, and planning, and watching Allura out of the corner of her eye. Wishing. Wishing as she's done for years, though there have been other beds to lay in since, that she and Allura had not been so gods-cursed practical in their youth.

It rankles her all day, a persistent thing that doesn't melt away in the face of Council debate and Grog's asinine questions, not even in the hours that follow, in the work to be done. Allura always moving at the fringes of the activities, talking and planning the way she's always been good at. Every time Kima returns to Emon, she sees all over again how perfectly Allura fits here.

She resents it, and she resents _herself_ for not also fitting here (or anywhere else, for that matter), and it was not that long ago that it seemed like all the resentment had gone out of her, bled away by her pilgrimage; she wonders if it was the duergar that stoked it back to life within her, or if she'd done an insufficient job of burying it.

A hand comes to rest, light as a feather, on her shoulder. "Would you have dinner with me?" Allura asks, and Kima realizes that dusk has passed. "I have a room for you, if you need somewhere to stay."

Kima could turn her down. It might even be for the best. It's been so long since they've seen one another in person that her usual defenses have been stripped away, and she doesn't know what good, if any, can come of speaking her mind.

But Allura's voice is soft, kind, still a thread of worry running through it. "That would be great," Kima says, and follows Allura back to her tower.

Dwellers of the Cloudtop District call out to Allura, greeting her as she passes. She smiles and returns their words, simple inquiries easily exchanged in a moment's passing. Kima can see, plainly, how well-liked she is, how gracious and wise everyone finds her.

"You've been awfully quiet," Allura says as they enter the tower.

This is what comes of biting her tongue so hard. "Long...day, week. Month, I guess. It's a change of pace, not being attacked every other step."

She knows instantly that she's said the wrong thing; Allura's mouth twists into a devastated frown.

"Don't," Kima says hurriedly, reaching out to catch hold of Allura's hand. "Don't, forget I—"

"Forget you went missing? Forget that I feared they might bring back your empty body?" Allura pulls her hand, none too gently, from Kima's grasp and strides off across the room, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'll do my best, Kima."

"We've both been in tight spots before," Kima points out, still trying—fruitlessly, probably—to smooth this over. "Probably will be again. Me, at least."

One of Allura's hands lifts to her face, and though her back is turned to Kima, she's sure that it's a tear being wiped away; Kima hears it in the tremor of her voice.

"I couldn't even go with them." It's the loathing, the _resentment_ in Allura's voice that surprises Kima the most, because she finds a reflection in it where she hadn't expected one. "I sent a...a well-meaning group of adventurers to find you, because I couldn't leave Emon."

It's the first moment they've been alone all day, and it…unnerves Kima, much as she's resented it, to see Allura's façade of propriety fall away. Replaced by bitterness, by impatience, by irritation. All the things that Kima, too, has been hiding. Suddenly, Allura does not feel so far from her anymore, if only she can reach out, that last little bit.

Tentative now, Kima moves closer to Allura's turned back. "Well, it worked out. You saved me."

There's a beat of silence, and then Allura says, her voice wet and wrong, "I wish we hadn't called it off."

For a moment, Kima doesn't understand the words; when she finally does, she's sure she misheard them.

"I was trying to be practical," Allura says. She sniffs right after, which is neither graceful nor proper, and Kima's heart swells with fondness, because this is a woman she recognizes: a person still messy like the rest of them underneath her grandeur, who had half her hair burned off when Thordak turned his gaze on her, who babbled incoherently in Kima's ear as she was carried off the battlefield after. "I didn't think it made sense, trying to continue on—we were going to be separate, so often, and I didn't know what kind of life we could have, with our responsibilities taking us in two different directions, I thought…"

"It seemed smart," Kima agrees, "at the time." Her voice sounds funny now, too, glaringly wrong to her own ears, as if strangled by the force of her own body pumping blood at an alarming rate.

"Maybe it was," Allura says. "Maybe, but—all I could think about, while you were missing, was all the time we could have had. Not enough, but more than it would have been, if you'd…"

Kima, briefly, forgets to breathe. When her body forces the issue, the air gushes into her lungs too fast, too loud.

"Well, I didn't," she says, words made heartier by oxygen and hope. "Seems like a sign, maybe."

Allura gives a watery laugh. "It's always signs with you, isn't it? Never coincidence, never happenstance—"

"Allie. Please look at me."

Allura turns, her face damp and a little blotchy but still so _beautiful_ , and Kima reaches up to take her hands. This time, Allura doesn't pull away.

"D'you mean it?" Kima asks.

"Of course," Allura says, her eyes fixed on Kima, her features still a little taut with distress. "All of it."

Kima tugs at her hands and rises up on her tiptoes, and even though Allura bends like she's expecting it, like she _knows_ it's going to happen, she still lets out a soft little _oh_ of surprise when Kima's mouth meets hers, sucked back in again when Kima's hands reach up to frame her face. Allura's hands fall to grasp at her shirt, hauling her closer. They part only to breathe, deeply, and then kiss again, Allura's mouth warm and desperate at first but softening, deepening, after a moment.

When they finally do pull apart—foreheads still pressed together, breathing one another's air—Kima says, "Then let's try again."

Allura laughs, the sound of it breathy and happy. "You'll be going away again soon," she points out.

"I'll write letters. Better ones. And I'll come back, I swear, as soon as I can."

Kima kisses her, as if by this alone she can convince her; by the way Allura reacts, hands grasping at Kima's hair, she's doing a fair job of it.

When they part again, Allura nods. "All right."

"All right?"

"All right."

They grin at one another, and Kima wipes the tears off Allura's face and kisses her again. She thought, way back when, that she'd never forget what it was like, kissing Allura, but time erases all things. It is much, much better than she remembers. Transcendent. Incandescent.

Later—over dinner and wine, maybe—there will be time for the full story of the Underdark. Allura can tell her all about what's got her so tied down to Emon. For now, though, they're together, holding onto each other, and the world outside, which has harangued them for fifteen years too long, can wait.


End file.
